The following exchange be tween former New Jersey Govs. Brendan T. Byrne and Tom Kean took place in a teleconference Thursday morning.

Q: Gov. Jon Corzine is exploring shutting down the state government if he doesn't get a budget he can sign. How effective is this as a negotiating weapon? And what are the practical implications?

BYRNE:
My experience in that was in closing down the schools, and it worked pretty well because it brought home that there are choices you have to make in this business. If you don't have the money to open the schools, you close them down. Faced with that choice, the Legislature reluctantly closed them down and gave me an income tax with an expiration date of January 1978, at which point they presumed they'd have a new governor.

KEAN:
It's sort of a nuclear option. You can use it as a threat, and usually the things threatened to close are things that matter most to constituents of the Legislature. In Washington, they threatened to close the national parks and Washington Monument. But it . . .

BYRNE:
Actually, Bill Clinton did close down the government for a couple of days, and the Republicans thought that would hurt him, but it actually helped him - and it helped the public understand what was at issue.

KEAN:
In this case, it's all the Democrats.

BYRNE:
You're making a good point. The Republicans are offering no help at all. You're going with the mantra of a 10-percent increase in the budget, and that's not fair. Corzine has cut $2.5 billion - and that's with a budget that has a lot of pass-throughs going to programs the Legislature created. He's also faced with a back-loaded labor contract not of his making.

KEAN:
Look, if when Corzine ran for election he said he was going to balance the budget by borrowing and raising taxes - well, anyone could have done that. It takes more courage to cut spending than to raise taxes. You haven't cut the budget if you're raising taxes.

BYRNE:
What about the $2.5 billion in budget cuts?

KEAN:
I don't know that they're there. It's a shell game, cutting some things and raising others, when the overall budget is up 10 percent.

BYRNE:
I'm having lunch today with (Montclair University president) Susan Cole, and she has 3,000 more kids in school now. You want her to tell them not to come?

KEAN:
No, I don't. But if the budget is up 10 percent, not enough was cut. I would not have cut higher education. Neither would you. But if that's the governor's decision, you go with it.

BYRNE:
I'm not talking about little kids who have no choice in the matter - kids who are getting state aid. And that's what's going up. All you're doing is talking in slogans and bumper stickers.

KEAN:
It's not a slogan to say we're doing the same thing we've been doing for years, which is borrow and increase spending and taxes.

BYRNE:
I have not complained about borrowing that identifies a source of repayment.

KEAN:
No source has been identified. It's just being put off until the next governor has to deal with it. You and I both suggested sources to repay, and the governor and Legislature have not done it.

BYRNE:
By the way, the Transportation Trust Fund has nothing to do with the budget.

KEAN:
It should, because part of the borrowing we're doing is to pay for bridges and roads, and that's what the Transportation Department does.

BYRNE:
It has nothing to do with this year's budget. Let's deal with what we have. We have to have a budget, and we're short. I've been asking you for months, Tom, to identify things that could be cut in this budget, and all I get is glib answers. When I say kids, you say, "Oh, no." When I say higher ed, you say, "Oh, no." That doesn't help.

KEAN:
You've said let's get rid of the state income tax and make our taxes a percentage of the federal tax. Stop sending rebates and have them deducted from property tax.

BYRNE:
My suggestion was to repeal the present income tax and to piggy-back it on the federal tax, and I can't get one Republican to co-sponsor a bill.

KEAN:
Why a Republican? The Democrats are in total control.

Q: As Republicans are a minority in both chambers of the Legislature, do they have any viable role in the budget process, or is it basically up to the Democrats?

BYRNE:
If we're going to have the New Jersey we want, we've got to stop saying, "It's your problem." It's everybody's problem.

KEAN:
The Republicans could be given a viable role. They could have an equal voice on the budget committee. But they haven't been invited on an equal basis.

BYRNE:
That's not true. I talked to Sen. (William) Gormley, and he said he's sympathetic to a lot of Corzine's proposals, so he obviously hasn't been excluded.

KEAN:
The Republicans are down in Trenton today, and they'll sit around and wait for the Democratic caucus to negotiate, but they're not included.

BYRNE:
Everybody sits around and waits, including the governor. I'm really disappointed you're not trying to help, that you're trying to blame.